Missing Minutes
by sentinel75
Summary: The aftermath of the Connor's bank raid, from FBI Special Agent James Ellison's point of view. Written to correct a glaring oversight in my view by the producers.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I do not own anything relating to the Terminator franchise, and this work of fiction is not written for any monetary gain.

Right: assumptions. Always declare your assumptions before beginning an explanation.

- The use of the time machine wouldn't damage the vault. I'm basing this on the use of the time machine by John Henry in 'Born to Run', where the use of the TDE didn't leave any damage to the room Henry lived in. Therefore, law enforcement and Ellison would've had access to the vault.  
- Going on from this, Cromartie's head wouldn't have travelled in time. Here's why: When John Henry, John Connor and Catherine used the TDE, Cameron, with her endostructure exposed, didn't go, so anything using the TDE would have to be fully enclosed in living flesh - which Cromartie's head presumably wasn't, among other things.

* * *

"_You know them?"_

_James Ellison grimaced as he watched the bank hold-up unfolding on the television._

"_Less and less, all the time."_

_  
1999_

He came to slowly, his mind first registering the soft murmur of voices and the beeps of medical equipment around him, then the dull pain that seemed to ripple through his whole body. He hissed softly, and then gave himself a limb-and-digit count, discovering the button for the painkillers in his hand at the same time. He gave it a press and lay still, counting the seconds until the edge was taken off the pain. Only then did he try to open his eyes.

To his absolute non-surprise, it seemed that he was in a hospital room, just a general ward instead of anything like an intensive-care unit. He released some of his internal tension at this discovery; it didn't seem like he was that badly injured after all. But for the life of him, he couldn't remember what caused him to end up in hospital at all….

Propping himself up slowly and looking around, he discovered that the murmuring was coming from a TV set placed on a table nearby, which was currently set to CNN. Still fuzzy from regaining consciousness and the painkillers in his system, he stared blankly at the set until a particular news item caused him to pay more attention. It was about the raid on the bank by the Connors.

Memories lit up in Agent James Ellison's head like a switch had been thrown. He'd been in the vault, trying to figure out what the Connors had been up to…

But that couldn't be right. The TV was now showing still photos of a blackened room, one that had obviously contained an explosion, one so powerful that it had torn the door of the vault off it's hinges and knocked off all the handles and wheels.

Except he remembered being in a near-pristine vault, and the damage done to that door…

"Agent Ellison!"

"Huh?" His shaky concentration broken, James' head whipped around to look at the nurse who had called his name; not a good idea, as his brain protested at such a sudden change in aspect. He allowed himself a soft groan in response as the nurse bustled over and fussed around him, apologising all the while for not realising that he had regained consciousness. Giving in to the pressure on his shoulders, he closed his eyes and allowed himself to relax. He was patient; he would have plenty of time to solve the mysteries of his memories.

* * *

"Special Agent Ellison, you are one tough son-of-a-gun," remarked Special-Agent-in-Charge Tim Wehner, as he stood at the foot of James' bed, hands jammed into the pockets of his rumpled suit.

James chuckled at his boss' remarks. "We learnt how to take a hit or two down in Georgia, being a double insult to the Klan – black _and_ Catholic."

"I believe that, seeing you awake after that shock. But I still can't wrap my head around _this_," Tim said, gesturing at the case files piled up on the table beside the bed. James had requested them as soon as he could stay awake for most of the day. He gave Tim a grin.

"They also taught us the value of persistence," James said, reaching for a new case file. "It's something I've called on many a time with the Connor case, and this is no exception."

Tim shook his head. "They've really flipped you the bird this time, haven't they? Disappearing like Copperfield from an exploding bank vault!"

"And we still don't know why they were in there in the first place. Based on their past history, they should've targeted a technology company first. So why this bank? Was there something in that vault that they thought they had to destroy, and they got caught in the blast?"

Tim gave a shrug. "It's the Connors, who knows what act's next in their travelling circus? The LAPD are just happy that the body count was low and they weren't embarrassed again. We got a lead on the young lady though."

"Oh?"

"Yep. Cameron Phillips, registered at Red Valley High School, New Mexico."

Lights went off in James' head again. "The school that Connor went to… uh, escaped from?" He wasn't game to bring up the robot-legged shooter.

"The same. Match was through photo ID, haven't got her prints on file. However, when we tried to track down the parents, the address led us to the house of an unmarried couple in their twenties, who had no knowledge of the lady." Tim sighed and ran his hands through his hair. "You wouldn't believe the shit that we got when her photo was posted though. More'n the usual – people have claimed to see a lady just like her all across the West. Not to mention the damn college pranksters."

Whatever Tim was about to say next was interrupted by his beeper. He didn't even look at it before giving James an apologetic grin. "Sorry; I'd stay until your missus turns up, but I've got to deal with the next crisis. Don't push yourself too hard, Ellison, you're supposed to be resting." James gave him a dismissive wave in response, which made Tim laugh as he left the room, pulling his pager off his belt. James could hear his curse halfway down the hall.

Only after he heard the bell of the elevator, did James flick through the stack of files to the one on the bank vault. The description of the vault's condition matched the images seen on the news – massive damage consistent with a large explosion within. No other recoverable evidence – nothing from when the Connors were locked in the vault.

James skimmed through the file, pausing when he came across a previous image of the undamaged vault. As he stared at it, his mind filled in the missing details: the unusual weapon to the left, the electronic paraphernalia behind the façade of safe-deposit-box doors, the piles of clothes in the middle of the room (and James couldn't even begin to figure out why they were there), the headless torso of the thing which had ripped apart the safe door, with the gleaming, grinning skull up against the far wall…

Had there been some sort of explosion that occurred after he had been electrocuted, something that had obliterated all this evidence afterwards? No, couldn't be; the LAPD SWAT team had been in the vault first, followed by LAPD Forensics. There had to have been somebody other than him who had seen the inside of the undamaged vault; Forensics had to have recovered some prints. Where was this information? James continued to mull this over as he flicked through the other files, pausing in the process as he realised something.

Tim had said that the Connors had _disappeared_.

Not died, or had been destroyed; disappeared like Copperfield. Like magic.

Seized by a sudden intuition, James quickly pulled out the file on the bank vault. There it was: No recoverable evidence.

As in, no material whatsoever – no organic residue from bodies caught in the explosion. No metallic remains from phones or belt buckles. No gun remnants – because Ms. Phillips had clearly been carrying the gun she had coolly taken off the bank security guard when she was locked in the vault.

Stunned by the realisations, James put the file back on the stack and sat back in the bed, deep in thought. Implications and accusations whirled through his mind, all of it utterly preposterous and so unthinkable, he was left questioning his memories. Had it all been some fantastic dream that his mind had conjured up while in the depths of unconsciousness? Except he couldn't forget what he saw, especially not the grin on the skull which loomed large in his mind's eye now, as if it found Ellison's situation some wonderfully clever, fantastic joke.

James was beginning to think that the joker was the universe, and that the joke was at his expense.

His recollections were interrupted once again, but this time by a far more pleasant surprise, his wife Lila, and he banished his disturbing thoughts from his mind for now.

* * *

For the 'damn college pranksters', please read 'Cameron's Arrival' by TermFan1980.


	2. Chapter 2

_January 2000_

"No, no… I had it in this shelf…"

Shifting in his cramped seat in front of the engineer's desk, James Ellison rubbed his eyes and held his head in his hands in a brief moment of weakness. The almost incessant flickering of the overhead lights was combining with the dull rumble in the background and the regular, distant thump of explosions to give him a headache. Not for the first time, he wondered at the intelligence of his decision to come out here, a steel mill near Denver, Colorado, in the middle of January. He hated the cold. Lila loved the snow, and had gleefully accepted James' Christmas present of a week in Vail. He'd decided to use a day to follow up another lead in the Connor case, one potentially good trace out of the too-many that poured into the FBI's offices following the bank vault disappearance- uh, explosion.

James had been in amongst the leads almost as soon as he was out of the hospital, sorting the probables from the fanciful and then tracking down the all-too-few probables. He'd also tried to talk to the witnesses of the Connor's entrance, but he received grudging responses from many of those he had contacted, mostly along the lines of _the FBI already took our statements, why are you here?_

Those who James managed to interview again repeated the answers they gave earlier; almost verbatim, in one or two cases. This had the effect of confounding James further and adding to the frustration he felt ever since he had discovered that the bank building had been demolished quick-smart. As he waited for the engineer to finish rummaging, he mulled over the experience of tracking down the interviewees again, focusing on the apprehension, sometimes near-fear of the witnesses when he introduced himself, unconsciously tapped out a beat that had gotten into his head -_ Taptap, taptap, taptap, tap-tap, taptap, taptap, taptap, tap-tap…_

The snowy-haired head of the tall engineer suddenly appeared from below James' line of sight with a soft exclamation of happiness. He held a thick, battered expandable file in his hands, the type commonly in use about three decades ago, absolutely stuffed with papers. He placed it gently on the desk and undid the top slowly, before beginning to pull out the contents in a deliberate and methodical manner. Soon, the scarce empty space on the engineer's desk was buried under line diagrams, blueprints and papers covered in unfathomable electrical calculations, yet James had the feeling that there was a specific order to the layout. Finally, the engineer put the file to one side, cleared his throat, and clasped his hands together before leaning forward on his desk and looking at James.

"So, I bet you're wondering what all this has to do with your case, Agent Ellison."

James smiled thinly. "The thought had crossed my mind, Mr. Gorman." _Elias Gorman_, James remembered from the FBI background check. An electrical engineer with years of experience in the high-power industry but almost none in the high-technology field.

Elias smoothed out the first of the papers on the desk. "This here is a map of the area the bank was located in – about here." James leaned forward – the way the map was drawn, the actual building was very faint and difficult to see.

"But that's just coincidence," Elias continued, "Or so I thought at the time. This map was actually drawn to map out the location of these substations, here, here, here and here," he said, pointing out the buildings marked in darker ink as they did so. They made a rough square around the city block the bank was located in, with the bank itself not quite in the centre. Equally dark lines marked the incoming and outgoing electrical transmission lines that linked the substations to the high-voltage grid and the suburban networks the stations serviced.

"I was on the project team put together to upgrade these substations," Elias continued with his explanations. "That involved replacing the transformers and other equipment. The new transformers installed had a much larger capacity than required – 200MVA – to allow for future growth in the power consumption of the district."

The engineer looked up at James with hooded eyes. "They're still not used to their full capacity today."

James himself was peering at the map of the substations. "I know this area. These are pretty well established suburbs, aren't they? Not the type for expansion."

Elias nodded slowly. "Supposedly the County was planning to woo some industry to areas nearby set aside for them, and they did, but not the type to justify transformers of this size, especially not four of them."

"So you've got four oversized transformers – each

200 em-vee…ay?"

"MVA – mega volt-amperes. A fancy term for megawatt that electrical engineers use."

"That are hardly utilised." James looked up at Elias. "Can't write it off as overengineering?"

Elias gave James a half-smile. "Some margin for overcapacity is prudent, but a waste of resources is unforgivable. Especially if you have a conduit that goes nowhere and does nothing."

"Oh?"

The engineer pulled a smaller sheet of paper from the edge of the desk and set it onto the map, a piece of tracing paper. "See these markings here?"

Elias pointed out the lines in question, faint dashed ones that headed from each substation to somewhere in the square-ish region in between the substations. On the big map, they were soon lost amid the jumble of light and dark lines.

Now Elias pulled the smaller tracing paper onto the big map. "I took the liberty of making this diagram, getting rid of all the clutter." He carefully lined up where the boundary of the substations was marked with the markings on the tracery and…

"And there we go."

Four sets of three…pipes, James imagined, gently snaked their way out of the substations to join up at an unmarked building close to the centre of the small map. James leaned forward, carefully lifting up the tracery to examine the equivalent building on the map, curiosity and a kind of dread rising within him simultaneously.

The building that the pipes joined up at was the bank, the bank that Elias had pointed out earlier, the bank that the Connors had disappeared from. Elias recognised the look that James shot him – _you must be kidding me._

James lowered the tracing paper back down and studied it further. "These notes along the pipes –"

"Ratings, how much current and power they can carry, and so on," Elias explained. "Essentially, these conduits can carry the full 200MVA that each of these transformers can handle."

James sighed and rubbed his eyes again, as another distant explosion shook the building. What was going on here – were they dealing with old munitions?

He shook his head sharply, bringing his mind back on track. "Mr Gorman, can you think of any reason why the full output from four big – big?"

"Massive."

"-massive transformers, is connected to a nondescript bank building?"

The engineer shrugged, a confused expression on his face. "In all my experience, Agent, I can't think of any previous arrangement like this, nor think of any good reason for it to exist, and I was hoping to ask you the same question."

"How did you find out about this?"

"The address of the bank that the FBI put out, and I remembered working on this job nearby, with strange aspects to it. I'm not given to conspiracy theories," Elias said, leaning back and folding his arms across his chest, "But I am by nature suspicious, so I was able to make these copies for myself for later reading."

"And you keep them at work?"

Elias shrugged. "When you think that someone is snooping around your home, you take precautions."

James' eyes widened in surprise. "Has your house recently been broken into?"

Elias shook his head. "A shotgun blast into the air deters most, but judging by footprints that aren't my own in my garden, some people don't learn too quick what's good for their health."

James nodded slowly. "If you haven't done so already, I'd advise taking your concerns to the local police," he remarked, holding up his hands as Elias began to protest. "I know, I know, you're the type to do it yourself, however they are probably best-equipped for investigating in-depth anyone who may be casing your property and tracking them down. Now, if you don't mind, Mr Gorman, I'd like you to see a couple of pictures and if you could please give your opinion on what caused the changes between them."

With that, James placed the before-and-after pictures of the bank vault on the desk. An intrigued expression on his face, Elias leant closer to the pictures, spending long seconds examining one then the other. Not looking up, he murmured, "An explosion?"

"One that doesn't leave any chemical residue behind," James remarked.

Several more seconds passed as Elias studied the 'after' picture closely, then he leaned back. "I'm not sure what opinion you'd like me to provide, Agent Ellison, I'm an electrical –"

"Mr Gorman, I'm not unwise about the world around me. I've seen lightning strikes that have turned trees to woodchips, and I've seen the results of severe electrocution. I know what electricity can do. Is it possible that the amount of electrical power you're talking about could've done that damage in that vault?"

Elias shrugged. "You've started off with the wrong person. My job is to get power to where it's needed - how it's used after that is not something I've taken much notice of. Come on, I'll find you someone who could help you more." He pushed himself up out of his chair and was striding between the cubicles before he realized that he wasn't being followed.

James was internally debating the ramifications of showing the photo to more people when a shadow over him made him look up. Elias had a wry smile on his face. "Well - do you want to find out if your theory is correct?"

James took a look at the photo before standing up with a sigh and following the engineer. _Well, the worst they can say is 'I don't know'._

The loud, enthusiastic person that Elias tracked down took a quick look at the photos, scoffed and then James suddenly found himself kitted out in a day-glo vest, steel-capped boots, gloves, safety hat and goggles, after which he was led into the snowbound outdoors and towards the large, dull grey buildings that were the source of the constant rumble. Xenon lamps from above and an orange glow from below lit the inside of the grey building, as cylinders of superheated steel were moved about under gargantuan overhead cranes. Elias, James and the enthusiastic metallurgist whose name James couldn't remember, waited and watched as one of the massive barrels was tipped over by a crane, yellow-glowing liquid lava pouring to the ground with a crackle and the wail of a siren. As the two men passed, the barrel was winched back up again, and James instinctively raised his arm to shield himself from the ferocious, but oddly-comforting heat that rippled out from within, a counterpoint to the grey cold outside. He caught a sight of yellow bricks outlined in white in the depths of the barrel before he moved deeper into the building. The rumbling roar that James had first heard on entering was now a throbbing, buzzing hum.

Their journey ended in a chilled control room, dominated by a button-festooned set of panels and pockmarked reinforced windows, looking over a lidded cauldron that belched smoke and fume, flames licking hungrily from underneath the edge of the lid. The control room was lit by the yellow-white glow of molten rock, the consistency of whipped cake batter that poured from a hatch in the side of the cauldron to disappear into a hole in the floor. A set of boxy arms above the cauldron lid held three black, steaming rods that slowly pumped in and out of the cauldron. Around the cauldron, silver-suited figures moved about with a tired swagger, and a large bucket hung off a crane to one side.

"Agent Ellison," the metallurgist announced, "Welcome to the meltshop."

Introductions were quickly made with the orange-clad men in the room, and James was invited to stand with the young man in front of the blinking control panel. Screens with crudely-drawn graphics were set into the surface, with squares changing from blue to white, green to red as a stubby pipe was removed from the door in the side of the cauldron, and the hum turned into a snarl before stopping completely as the three rods were raised, their lower sections glowing yellow and white, quivering as the arms hit their stops.

The young man, Graham, played the control panel like an organ as he explained what was going on. "You're looking at an electric arc furnace, essentially an overblown three-phase welding machine that melts down 160 tons of shredded cars and chopped girders with fifteen-inch-long man-made lightning. We've just finished up one heat – we're just taking a final temperature reading now…" As he spoke, a lance moved to plunge in through the door, removing itself a few seconds later with a bolus of the lava-like material – slag – and a smoking tip, which was removed and thrown away by one of the silver men below. On the far side of the building, a scoreboard flashed a number around three thousand, and the whole cauldron, lid, rods, arms and all, began to tilt away from the control room, as a yellow glow appeared on the other side of the cauldron.

"We're tapping the steel into a ladle", Graham continued, "and it'll go away to a smaller version of this furnace, where we'll put in a bit of carbon and manganese and heat it up a bit more, before it gets poured through copper tubes and water sprays to solidify, then gets rolled into reinforcing bar that get put into the slab under your house," he finished, nodding at James.

The metallurgist appeared on James' other side. "You wanted to see what damage 800 megawatts of power can do," he remarked. "While I can't give you that, I can show you what 100 megawatts of power can do, and that should give you an idea." Outside, the furnace tilted back towards the pulpit, as an all-terrain forklift thrust a length of beam into the door, like an oddly mechanical parody of a tiny male insect mating with the much more massive female of the species.

"You've arrived just at the right time," a heavyset man drawled from his seat at the back of the pulpit. "Charging is one of the more spectacular sights of EAF operations, and wet charge season makes it even more so!"

Graham rolled his eyes. "'Spectacular', he says. Substitute it with 'Dangerous'."

James, in over his head and not really understanding what was going on, simply nodded at the byplay and turned his attention back to the now-level furnace, where the roof, black rods and the arms that held them (graphite electrodes and electrode arms, Elias explained) were lifted up and swung away from the pulpit. The same searing white-yellow glow that had come from within the ladle James had seen earlier spilled upwards and outwards, as the crane moved the bucket over the mouth of the furnace. There was a brief pause as the crane driver made final adjustments, and James was suddenly aware of all eyes in the pulpit on him. The clamshell base of the bucket opened.

The scrap fell into the furnace with a rush, then seemed to come back out again with a fountain of sparks and a bomb-like blast to rival any Fourth of July fireworks, making James duck by instinct, his business suit and orange vest feeling incredibly flimsy. Glowing bullets of metal struck the windows with gunshot-like cracks and left fresh scorch-marks.

What was only seconds seemed like minutes as James used the edge of the console to pull himself up from his kneeling position on the floor. A quick comparison of his current position with genuflection in church shot through his mind (as if bowing before the might of God?) as he got to his feet, turning to take in the ugly smirks of the men in the back of the pulpit before shaking his blasphemous thoughts from his head. Elias patted him on the back with a friendly grin while Graham favoured him with a condescending smile.

"Don't worry, man, we all do it for the first time," he remarked, before turning his attention to the control panel. The furnace roof swung back on again and settled down on the flaming scrap, and James tensed as the sense of anticipation rose in the room again. Blue lights under the operator's fingers were replaced by white as the electrodes descended into the furnace.

The lights in the control room dimmed as a flash of blue-white light erupted from the top of the furnace, and James winced as another concussion tore through the air, barely muted by the walls of the pulpit – not that it mattered much, James could feel the vibrations in the soles of his feet. Snarls, crashes and crumples of noise thundered out with the sparks from every slit and hole in the furnace, the overhead lights flickering in time with the up-and-down thrusts of the electrodes as they descended into the furnace. The stubby pipe moved back into the furnace door again and issued a jet of blinding flame, accompanying the other storm of flickering fingers that pulsed from the furnace as the shattering sound steadied into a throbbing, pulsing roar.

James was brought out of his daze by Elias' hand on his shoulder, and he was led out of the pulpit again, but the engineer gave him ear protection this time and walked out in front of the furnace instead of retracing the route they had come in by. As James walked past the furnace door, the ear-splitting crackles of the arcs shaking his entire body, he caught a glimpse of the furnace interior, of sheets of flame and angrily leaping molten steel with the blue-white flash of electric plasma penetrating through from deep within, and he spent the entire trip back to Elias' desk wondering if that was what the final battle would be like, the serried ranks of Heaven's angels casting lightning bolts into the chaos of Hell below, as demons responded with jets and balls of liquid fire.

* * *

Just for comparison: a household kettle of 2L capacity has a rating of up to 2.5 kilowatts, or 0.0025 megawatts.


	3. Chapter 3

He stood outside in the freezing cold, watching the snow drift gently down around the pine trees. James stuck his gloved hand out from under the porch and gathered a few snowflakes. It had been explained how the accumulated ice on the scrap flashed into steam when it came into contact with the molten metal in the furnace, hence the explosion on charge. He looked at the melting flakes and contemplated how a multitude of the delicate shapes, when subjected to the right conditions, could generate enough power to level a building. It did much to dispel any peaceful thoughts the scene induced.

A soft touch at his elbow brought him out of his reverie, and he turned to gaze at a softly smiling Lila. "Did you have a win today?" she asked. He offered her a half-smile in return, and followed her when she beckoned him inside, grateful to get out of the cold. Her hug did more to warm him up than the roaring fire they stood in front of.

They both found it useful to bounce points of their cases off each other in order to gain further insights, and Lila prepared some hot chocolate for themselves as she watched James settle himself into his classic investigator pose: one leg over the other knee, supporting a notepad, pen in hand and tapping a beat out on his thigh.

One thing which had drawn her to him was the quiet, steady voice that he used when explaining things and running through his thoughts, and she let his voice wash over her as he ran through the investigation so far, focusing on what today's trip had brought. His cool, steady-as-you-go demeanour had helped him rise rapidly through the FBI, and he had been given the Connor case in response to his good investigations. Now, as she heard his steady voice falter in confusion and uncertainty, she wondered if this was the case too far.

As he had so many times before when explaining the case to her, James had ended up with _that_ photo in his hand. He didn't stir from his pose as she cuddled up beside him and she saw with a quick glance that he wasn't seeing the photo anymore, he was seeing the details in his mind, the details that his memory contained but the case file didn't.

Her kiss on his cheek and a whispered "Hey" caused him to stir. Sighing, he put down the undamaged-vault picture and brought out the picture of the supposedly bombed-out vault.

"I saw an electrical engineer today," James began to explain. "He called in when we put out a public bulletin on the Connors, saying that he had some information on the building itself. Now, given that the Connors have a penchant for targeting the offices of high-technology companies –"

"Well, with every other new startup now a dot-com, they've got a wide pick of possible targets, don't they?" Lila remarked, half in jest.

James shrugged and made a humming sound with his throat, a gesture that Lila knew meant that she had made an insightful comment in his opinion. "Yup. So why target a bank?"

"Money for weapons?"

"That was our first thought, but the Connors have never done this before. Exactly how Sarah was first financed, we don't know, but we suspect that she's got caches of weapons and valuables – not just paper money, tangible assets such as precious metals and gems as well – all over the Southwest and Mexico. She's never seemed to have any issues with money beforehand and we've had scant reports of weapons caches being found in that area recently."

"Then again, someone finding the caches may not have reported the find."

"Also true. But the hit on this bank was very high profile and brazen. Connor's only made high profile attacks on technology companies, usually with a view to destroy them. So I'm asking, what's in this bank that interests her so much, she and her crew are ready to walk in there in broad daylight and hold the place up?"

"Ah! That's why, when this person said he had information on the bank, you followed it up."

"Exactly." His expression faltered. "I didn't expect what I got though…"

And so for the next fifteen minutes, Lila heard about the massive substations with the connections to the bank building, and the impromptu tour of the meltshop. Her eyebrows rose as James recounted his thoughts on staring into the furnace. While not overtly religious, James took his Catholicism seriously (as did Lila) and to hear his descriptions of the meltshop with the perhaps-blasphemous comparisons he was using was, for her, a touch unsettling. Like everything else about this case.

"So", James announced – Lila had heard this often enough to know that he was beginning his wind-up – "While I had first thought that an electrical discharge could've caused this damage – partly because of how I ended up in hospital" – _or so I'm told,_ the thought flashed through his mind – "I don't think it's feasible any more. The damage the photo shows doesn't include any molten material splatter or anything that looks like it's been melted and resolidified, because that's what electric arcs of that power would've done. Besides, anyone nearby would've definitely heard any arcing – or would've been deafened, and nothing like that was reported. No, it all looks like just a conventional, but very powerful explosion." He sighed and leaned back on the couch.

Lila smirked at him. "The prosecution rests?" That got an eyeroll from James; they both knew he sounded like that in court, which made the pun worse.

"I'm right back where I've been too many times in this case – no answers, many questions and contradictory evidence." He sat still for a moment before throwing himself to his feet, pacing forward a bit before turning around to face the couch again, chin in his hand. Lila knew how frustrated he felt; she was feeling the same way with her case about Saudi millionares, African bombings and uncooperative spy agencies. She leant forwards, arms on thighs. "What's the least improbable theory you've got?" The question was a standard tactic to help them move a stalled investigation forward.

James didn't answer immediately, and she could almost hear the cogs spinning in his head. His eyes flicked to meet hers, and she almost recoiled – she'd never seen them so dark.

"My theory is, that the Connors were interested in something in the bank vault," he began in a low voice, "something that was stored there, but it was a spur-of-the-moment hit. Not planned well. In the middle of whatever they were doing, they somehow disappeared from the vault." He paused. "The explosion is a fake, designed to cover up evidence of what they found or what made them disappear."

The words hung, dirtying the silence that had sprung up between them. James watched with growing sadness as Lila made the connections, and her eyes widened.

"Faked?..." She repeated, reaching for the case file and flicking through the information it contained, information that James was now implying was completely worthless. "You realise the implications of what you're saying?" she asked, meeting James' gaze. His only response was a slow, shallow nod of the head.

It was now Lila's turn to abruptly jump up from the couch and pace. "Do you realise what you're saying?" she repeated in a hiss. "You're implicating your _direct supervisor_ and countless others in a conspiracy to fake evidence, let alone cover up some sort of… alien abduction?!"

James' response was the same slow nod. Lila threw her hands up and let out a sound of disgust. "I can't believe you're ready to jeopardize your career-"

"Hey, hey, _hey!_" James stood up, agitated, and went over to Lila, stopping just before her with his palms out. "I'm not trying to be Fox Mulder here. All I'm saying is that the theory I've got fits best at the moment. I really hope it's not true, I'm _aching_ for it not to be true, because…"

"Because _what_?"

"Because of what it would mean if it was. Not just the possibility of corruption, or whatever it is in the Bureau that would make them do this –" he indicated the case file with a hand "- but what the disappearance of the Connors would mean."

"The existence of aliens?"

James snorted in humourless laughter. "Not that. It's the likelihood of the truth of the Connor's story. And it's _terrifying_." And there was so much uncertainty and fear in his gaze that it moved Lila to forget her previous anger and wrap her husband up in the warmest embrace she could produce. They stayed like that for many minutes, slowly rocking and soothing each other, until Lila pressed her cheek against the side of James' face and softly asked the question that had been nagging her.

"What are you going to do?"

The answer was mumbled and muffled against her neck, but she still understood.

"I don't know."


End file.
